Worlds Apart
by Sandshells
Summary: He had told her he would be back before the flower died. SSLE


A/N: This is just a short little stand-alone oneshot. Hope you like it.

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The flower had died months ago.

He had been gone for months, too—leaving the lily to shrivel and turn to dust in its vase, untouched and unchanged since his departure.

_"He's gone, Lily. It's time to move on with your life."_

_"He said…that before the flower died…he would come back." The words faltering, stunted, tripping slowly out of her mouth. Her gaze on her hands before her, on the painting across the room, anything but the lily for fear that she would see another petal drop off before her eyes._

_"He isn't coming back."_

The petals had withered, one by one.

Lily saw him everywhere she turned—his black hair, black eyes like a winter's night—and even when she closed her eyes his image was still there. She hadn't seen him for almost half a year, but he still remained there, fixed, in her mind. The dreams were the worst during the long summer nights. Sometimes she would jolt awake, surfacing up out of sleep into the hot, sweaty darkness, convinced she had seen him. But no matter how hard she stared, the corners of her room would remain dark and empty and silent, the dream slowly fading from her mind until she realized she was, again, alone.

_"You promise you'll come back?"_

_"I promise."_

He had left before sunrise in late December, his cloak swirling around his feet in the chill wind, leaving her with only a small, desperate hope that he would return.

The Order had located what they thought was a last legion of darkness; Lord Voldemort was gone, but his legend still remained. The Legion consisted of those who were fascinated by death, who didn't fear it; to most, it was their mission to bridge the gap between life and death, to find a way to cross back and forth between the two. To some of the members, it was the arrangement to enhance themselves so that they would never die. Either way, it was Dark Magic.

Severus had been one of the members who had gone to hunt them down. Contact had been shaky at best, even at the start of his mission. More and more often, she had passed days without seeing his head in the fire. The days had turned into weeks, and then months, correspondence slowing to a trickle and eventually stopping completely. After four solid months with no word from anyone on the mission, the Ministry had announced them "Missing, Presumed Dead." After that, though she had contacted every Order remember who had remained behind, she had found nothing. No trail at all, no clues.

In her last conversation with him, she'd been kneeling before the fireplace, as he quickly told her he had gotten separated from the others and was taking shelter in an abandoned farmhouse. "We have only minutes," he'd said. It turned out that the farmhouse wasn't abandoned after all, and they hadn't even had that long. He was gone in a puff of flames. Her last glimpse of his face had burned itself into her memory like the fire itself.

_Sev_, Lily thought, _I miss you._

She was sitting at the kitchen table, the table with only one thing on it—the vase that held the fragments of the dead lily. She scanned a letter from Mary, whom she hadn't seen for almost a year. Every line looked like it had been carefully worded not to upset her or make any mention of Severus.

Lily crumpled the letter in her fist, feeling that she would like nothing more than to curse its author into oblivion. Why did Mary have to be sticking her nose in here, anyway? Couldn't she see Lily was—busy?

_Busy._ She snorted humorlessly. _Yeah, right._

Lily was also a member of the Order, along with Alastor Moody, Kingsley Shacklebolt, someone named Arabella Figg, and many others, including Dumbledore. She _had_ contacted Dumbledore before, but he was at Hogwarts, and would be of no help to her. Even he had been unable to locate the Order members who had gone after the Legion.

During the first few weeks after her conversation with Severus in the fire, she had still held out a little hope. As the months passed, that hope had died a little more, crumpling and turning brown just as the lily had. But even after the flower died, she been able to stop herself from looking up at each little sound from outside, expecting to see him walk through the door, with the rare smile on his face that was meant only for her.

But it never happened, and the faint burst of hope that would bloom inside her for a second would then die as the house remained still.

She had ticked off days on the calendar at first, and then somewhere along the line she had stopped and never started again. She'd stopped rewinding her watch, too. No use in keeping track of the hours anymore. It was like everything had come to a standstill, like time had stopped the day he had left.

Though everyone kept telling her he wouldn't come back, that he was dead—and she tried to tell herself that, too, hoping it would make it easier—the smallest bit of hope remained in her. Not even hope, really—just something, the hint of a breath, like the guttering flame of a candle before it flickered out.

Lily never stopped waiting.

Even after the shadows of war began to fall on the land and the foundations started to crumble, cracking the ice from the frozen sky…she still waited. And searched. But she could never find him.

Even if he was out there, somewhere, alive…they were still worlds apart.

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A/N: Please review!


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